The Trout Underground Fly Fishing Bloghttp://troutunderground.com
Fly Fishing's Fun, Independent Voice : Tom Chandler's Fly Fishing Life : Fly Rods are the Measure of LifeFri, 19 Dec 2014 20:13:57 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.3http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/TroutUndergroundFlyFishBloghttps://feedburner.google.comWhere Do We Go From Here? (or, The Underground Ends?)http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TroutUndergroundFlyFishBlog/~3/hrg2vYLEMrM/
http://troutunderground.com/2014/11/where-here-underground/#commentsFri, 14 Nov 2014 20:24:15 +0000http://troutunderground.com/?p=9630Sorry for the extended radio silence. The plan was to laze about (from a blogging perspective) for a couple months while the L&T and I discussed what we wanted to do when we grew up.

When you’re in your 50s, that’s not a trivial question.

Included in that discussion was my work, recreational writing, family responsibilities — the usual tangle of stuff you’ll find wrapped around a mid-50s working professional raising two very energetic young girls.

Topics included the Trout Underground, the simple fly fishing blog that somehow acquired a life of its own.

When I founded the Underground in November of 2005, it wasn’t about anything more than going fishing. And maybe bringing a handful of like-minded fishermen along for the ride.

These days, I’m still fishing the little stuff, but between my two “entering-the-taxi-years” daughters and that whole making a living thing, my fishing trips have taken on the flavor of respite rather than exploration. In other words, I’m not Pushing Back the Boundaries of the Known Fly Fishing World, I’m Mostly Getting The Hell Out Of The House.

I’m typically driving to a small stream, fishing it for a couple hours, picking up the kids, knocking together something for dinner, scratching my head over their homework, and then falling down exhausted after they’re in bed.

The L&T — who knows the Underground has offered something of safety valve in the sanity department over the years — suggested a reboot, turning it into something broader; an outdoor blog encompassing fishing, hiking and outdoor stuff, including kids and what I’ll call “outdoor parenting.”

Someone only peripherally involved in the case began harassing us (and a client) via a series of semi-coherent emails. Our attorney extracted a promise to leave us the hell alone. That only sorta worked, but it didn’t matter.

That apparently triggered a fairly astonishing email from another interested party, the title of which should have been “You will pay for your insolence.” It threatened to have our kids removed, promised an IRS audit, suggested our lives would be ruined, yadda yadda.

It was empty posturing right up to the last paragraph, which unfortunately included a reference to the sender’s handgun skills.

Our attorney wasn’t amused, and neither were my friends in law enforcement.

By then, we’d pretty much exhausted our supply of “turn the other cheek.” We’re trying to resolve this fire drill outside a courtroom (we’ll see), but with this kind of inanity occurring in the background, we’ve elected not to publicize our comings and goings — or those of our kids.

In other words, scratch the Outdoor Underground, Parental Edition.

What’s Next?

I’m taking the winter off. And probably most of the spring. In fact, I may never fire up the Underground again.

With kids growing up, it’s hard to look at issues like income inequality, the militarization of the police, climate change, the erosion of civil rights, the loss of privacy or the destruction of the environment in quite the same way.

In terms of the future, I’ve got skin in the game.

So while I’ve enjoyed the million-plus words I’ve written about fly fishing, I’m thinking the next million might be better invested elsewhere.

You know — ask some hard questions. Challenge some bad thinking. Kick over a few anthills. Journalism, but not the mushy sort where you pretend a bad thing might be a good thing because some asshole is willing to give you a quote to that effect.

Right now, I’m posting the odd bit about writing on my Writer Underground blog. And I’m not ruling out any fishing-related work. But I am looking farther afield.

After the crazy dies down a little, I may fire up another online publication. I own a couple of interesting domains, and life is often an irresistibly circular affair.

Just saying.

Those who want to receive an email when I post news on the Underground might just want to add their email address to the Feedburner email list in the box below:

I won’t have access to your email and won’t spam you, but you will automatically receive an email if I post on the Underground. Couldn’t be simpler.

Roll Credits…

I’ve loved this song ever since it closed the Northern Exposure TV series. Might as well use it here:

While That’s Playing…

Thanks to everyone who had a hand in the Underground. It’s meant more to me than is apparent, and while this journey is at an end, I can safely say it wasn’t a boring one.

The part I never got used to was the moment where a car would creep past me in a fishing access parking lot, then stop, back up, and a voice would ring out “Hey, are you that fishing blogger guy?”

I love my readers (most of them anyway). You folks were willing to play the kind of mind games that made the Underground interesting.

On the stream, once I found something that worked, my first impulse was to see what else might work. The Underground gave me license to do pretty much the same thing with my writing. (Consider it a goofy version of the scientific method, only with verbs and beer.)

I hope my readers will keep doing good deeds. I’d suggest we’re at a point where we need it.

]]>http://troutunderground.com/2014/08/weekly-shortcasts-for-2014-08-20/feed/0http://troutunderground.com/2014/08/weekly-shortcasts-for-2014-08-20/Forget The “Golden” State: Notes From The “Extreme Drought” Statehttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TroutUndergroundFlyFishBlog/~3/SStnzxqUplE/
http://troutunderground.com/2014/08/forget-extreme-drought/#commentsWed, 20 Aug 2014 19:35:45 +0000http://troutunderground.com/?p=9618A team of biologists from UC Davis scoured the Sierras to measure the impacts of California’s “extreme” drought on fish, and the news was much worse than anticipated. Using notes from prior surveys, the team revisited habitats that supported sizable fish populations. What they found were little more than dry creekbeds:

As we moved up the Tuolumne drainage and the creeks got smaller, the effects of drought became more evident. On Woods Creek at Harvard Mine Road near Jamestown, where previous surveys had found dozens of fish, we found only sun-baked bedrock strewn with dry leaves.

Tellingly, there was so little to survey, the team completed its four-day itinerary before dusk on Day 2.

Notes On Dry Paper

Up here in the Underground’s part of the world, things are literally turning to dust.

We encourage the clover to grow in our tiny little swatch of watered lawn, and with the usual food sources withered and brown, we’re hosting a steady stream of rabbits, deer (including two six-point bucks) and other clover fiends.

Entertaining, but they’re all braving the attentions of a fast-moving Rosie the Dog just to eat, a reality that suggests a paucity of food elsewhere.

A recent survey of Mt. Shasta area wells shows a nearly 20″ drop in the water table over the last twelve months. Nervous times for a homeowner not hooked to city water.

A week ago I visited one of my local small streams, which normally fishes pretty well in August. Water was flowing about as fast it trickles through a leaky toilet, and I didn’t have the heart to check the temperatures.

Droughts aren’t pretty. They’re part of the natural cycle, and wildlife have survived worse, but it’s never easy to see it all happening at close range. Not to my fish and wildlife.